I have participated in a number of Esoteric Yogaprograms in the past six years, however one of my most recent experiences with the Esoteric Yoga Stillness Program for Women supported me to bring a deeper quality of stillness and presence with my body into my everyday life – to a level that I had not previously experienced.

In the way I’d approached previous Esoteric Yoga programs, I had been seeing each session as something to ‘tick off my list’– an isolated activity that was separate to the rest of my daily life. Once a session finished, I often didn’t consciously re-connect to the quality I had experienced for the rest of the week. In the next session, it would dawn on me “Oh yes! I remember that’s what I could feel last time and I wonder why I forgot about that during this past week…” This particular Esoteric Yoga program was different. I started to feel that each session was offering an opportunity to reflect on and connect to the quality in which I lived during the week and in everything I did. I began to look forward to each session as an opportunity to develop and deepen the connection to myself.

As I began to de-compartmentalise my participation in the yoga program, I started to feel the quality of stillness and the connection with my body more consistently as part of eachday, rather than just during the sessionitself.

What was amazingly supportive was that the women doing the program weregiven the opportunity to share whatever was coming up during each week on the online blogfor program participants. I found that the more I opened up to share my own experiences and to be part of other women’s sharings, the more connected I felt to the group. This supported me to maintain the connection I had felt within myself in each session, during the week. As the weeks progressed in the program, I felt more and more open and more and more present with my daily activities. This enabled me to become more aware of the quality of my movements and how this affected everything I did – and how I did it – throughout the day.

Although this particular course with the Esoteric Yoga Stillness Program for Women has now ended, as a result of the willingness to connect to myself and others in a more intimate and honest way, I have largely been able to hold onto the quality of presence that I experienced during the six-week program. For example, in the period following the program, I moved house two weeks earlier than planned with one week to pack while working full-time. The move involved a new living arrangement and I was also caring for a close family member who had surgery the week of the move, so there was a lot going on and a lot of things that needed to be done at a very physical level. There were certainly some stressful moments and times when I observed myself rushing, however overall it was an experience where I felt relaxed and was still able to laugh and enjoy what I was doing. I was much more able to focus on simply doing one thing at a time, rather than lose myself in needing to do everything, all at the same time… It was an experience where I wasn’t as hard on myself as I have been in the past – expecting myself to be ‘all things to all people’, without consideration for myself in the process. Instead, I was able to stay far more centred, and open to communication and the support offered by others.

By staying more connected to myself, I have been able to experience myself as the ‘being’ doing the ‘doing’ in life, instead of ‘doing’ life at the expense of the being – i.e. at the expense of me…This is a process that for me is constantly evolving. I’ve realised that there is no end point to arrive at – but rather, what I’ve connected to is a quality that I now know can be deepened every day.

This has been immensely supported by the Esoteric Yoga Stillness Program for Women which has allowed me to become much more aware of the connection to my body and the quality of my movements. I am now experiencing this more consistently as ‘stillness’ in my everyday life, which means responding to life guided by firstly being aware of my body, and then how this feels, rather than going into my head which requires overriding or ignoring my body.I hold a deep appreciation for the foundation and support offered through Esoteric Women’s Healthand the deeply supportive modality of Esoteric Yoga– which has enabled me and countless others to simply re-connect to the stillness that is innately within us all.